Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0036341 (schizophrenia)
 60,220 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Psychiatric disorders are common in medical inpatient and outpatient populations. As a result, internists commonly are the first to see psychiatric emergencies. As with all medical problems, a good history, including a collateral history from relatives and friends, physical and mental status examination, and appropriate laboratory tests help establish a preliminary diagnosis and treatment plan. Patients with suicidal ideation usually have multiple stressors in the environment and/or a psychiatric disorder (i.e., a major affective disorder, dysthymic disorder, anxiety or panic disorder, psychotic disorder, alcohol or drug abuse, a personality disorder, and/or an adjustment disorder). Of all patients who commit suicide, 70% have a major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, psychotic organic mental disorder, alcoholism, drug abuse, and borderline personality disorder. Patients who are at great risk have minimal supports, a history of previous suicide attempts, a plan with high lethality, hopelessness, psychosis, paranoia, and/or command self-destructive hallucinations. Treatment is directed toward placing the patient in a protected environment and providing psychotropic medication and/or psychotherapy for the underlying psychiatric problem. Other psychiatric emergencies include psychotic and violent patients. Psychotic disorders fall into two categories etiologically: those that have an identifiable organic factor causing the psychosis and those that have an underlying psychiatric disorder. Initially, it is essential to rule out organic pathology that is life-threatening or could cause irreversible brain damage. After such organic causes are ruled out, neuroleptic medication is indicated. If the patient is not agitated or combative, he or she may be placed on oral divided doses of neuroleptics in the antipsychotic range. Patients who are agitated or psychotic need rapid tranquilization with an intramuscular neuroleptic every half hour to 1 hour until the agitation and combativeness are under control. Haloperidol (Haldol) is the safest neuroleptic. Chlorpromazine (Thorazine), perphenazine (Trilafon), and, in the elderly, thiothixene (Navane) can also be useful if haloperidol (Haldol) is not effective and more sedation is needed; these drugs, however, produce more side effects. Violent patients need to be physically restrained and then given antipsychotic medication or, in the case of drug abuse or alcohol withdrawal, the appropriate drug management.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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PMID:Psychiatric emergencies. 373 71

A series of three experiments addressed major problems concerning the use of serum levels as predictors of clinical response to thiothixene (Navane) hydrochloride in schizophrenia: correlation of initial test doses with clinical response; comparison of fluorescence spectrophotometry with gas chromatography in relation to clinical response; and comparison of serum levels with RBC levels in relation to clinical response. All assays correlated (near r = .5) with Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale improvement during hospitalization, except RBC levels seemed to have superior correlations (.64) in patients with lower serum levels. These correlations are similar to those obtained with steady state levels. The different methods of determining thiothixene concentrations were highly intercorrelated as well. Thus, single-dose serum levels give important clinical correlations regardless of which assay is used for thiothixene determination.
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PMID:Correlation of initial thiothixene serum levels and clinical response. Comparison of fluorometric, gas chromatographic, and RBC assays. 683 Apr 9